Organizing All Those Papers!

I think organizing papers is a difficult task for anybody, but for we ADD Moms, it can easily become overwhelming.

As part of BlogHer’s Life Well Lived feature, I’d like to share some of the ways that I keep my papers organized and easy to find. Pop over to the discussion and give us your ideas, plus get even more from other bloggers!

Since “papers” can be either actual papers or digital ones, I will divide my hints to include both.

Paper documents

I think that as women with ADHD we have a tendency to keep too much of everything. We’ve all had the experience of not being able to find something that we needed – either because we don’t know where we put it or because we threw it away.

More papers = more to deal with = a greater chance of not finding anything.

Before I decide to keep something, I ask myself a few questions.

If I threw this away, could I get another copy? How easy would it be? What are the chances I will need it in the future?

For instance, several years ago we bought a new TV. I saved the paperwork in our file cabinet. Did I need to? Well, I’ve never used them, and I’m almost certain I could go to the manufacturers website and get them if I did need them. Should have been throw away.

Now when it comes to something more important – like the title to your car – that obviously needs to be kept in a safe place.

I have a two drawer filing cabinet for those important papers. I use a hanging folder with a plastic tab to designate categories like “Cars”. Inside the folder is a manila file folder for each vehicle. That’s where the title and repair information is kept.

I have 2 hanging folders that are very important. One is named “House” and the other “Permanent”.

Inside the “House” folder are manila folders – one for each room in the house as well as the garage and one that says “Whole House”. Papers for the refrigerator and stove are in the “Kitchen” folder. Papers for our new roof and furnace are under “Whole House”.

Most of the digital papers I keep are related either to bill paying or online purchases. Two of my favorite applications for this are SpringPad and Evernote. Both are free. 🙂

Both apps work basically the same. You open an account and set up your notebooks. Notebooks in this case would be like the file folders for your paper documents.

Each app has a little clipper thing that attaches to your toolbar. Whenever you are on a page that you want to save, you just click the little clipper. It opens up and saves the information on the page. You can save it to whatever notebook you want and even add tags. That makes finding it later even easier.

Give these ideas a try. Knowing you can find what you need quickly and easily is priceless.